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Timbale de Perdreau Diane
Created by Chef Juliette
Truffle crescents reveal a silken partridge timbale filled with tiny quenelles, mushrooms, and Madeira-bound game, then crowned with freshly roasted suprêmes and ringed with glossy Diane sauce.
Timbale de Perdreau Diane (moulded partridge timbale with truffles and Diane sauce) teaches the discipline of gentle heat. Before you touch a pan, know this: the bain-marie, the hot-water bath, must barely shiver. A boil squeezes fat and juices from the forcemeat, then the shell weeps, shrinks, and may fall when unmoulded.
The original entry assumed a saucier on staff, game stock never off the fire, a roasting spit, and a kitchen where the salamander stood ready, even though this dish asks for the oven's gentlest heat rather than its fiercest. Your home equivalent is one reduced game-and-Madeira foundation divided in two: one part binds the quenelles, while the other becomes Diane sauce with cream, truffle juice, and butter. A conventional oven supplies both the gentle poach and the fresh roast for the suprêmes, the breast fillets. One cook, one stove, one evening.
The brigade's separate sauce stations and service choreography are scaffolding, so they go. The truffle-lined mould, raw partridge forcemeat, layer of game gratin forcemeat from Gratins (No. 268), small truffled quenelles, and crown of freshly roasted suprêmes are the dish, so they stay. Keep the paste cold, then keep the water calm. That is the work that matters most.
Ingredients
skin-on partridge breast suprêmes
Quantity
8 (about 1¼ pounds / 560 g)
chilled
boneless, skinless partridge meat for the lining forcemeat
Quantity
1 pound 2 ounces (500 g)
kept very cold
boneless, skinless partridge meat for the truffled quenelles
Quantity
7 ounces (200 g)
kept very cold
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| skin-on partridge breast suprêmeschilled | 8 (about 1¼ pounds / 560 g) |
| boneless, skinless partridge meat for the lining forcemeatkept very cold | 1 pound 2 ounces (500 g) |
| boneless, skinless partridge meat for the truffled quenelleskept very cold | 7 ounces (200 g) |
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